John Playfair

(1748–1819) Mathematician United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

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John Playfair was a mathematician from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, best known for Elements of geometry.

Quick Facts About John Playfair

Born: March 10, 1748
Died: July 20, 1819
Nationality: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Profession: Mathematician
Notable works: Elements of geometry
Known for: Playfair's axiom, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, Q55968735

About John Playfair

John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which summarised the work of James Hutton. It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. Playfair's textbook Elements of Geometry made a brief expression of Euclid's parallel postulate known now as Playfair's axiom.

Biography source: Wikipedia